Sega: 3DS can attract mature audience to handheld gaming

Nintendo's 3DS handheld has the potential to attract an older, broader audience to handheld gaming, according to Sega West's president Mike Hayes.

Speaking in an interview published today on GamesIndustry.biz, the publisher boss suggested a number of mature Sega franchises could work on the 3DS, if the handheld appeals to a wider demographic than previous Nintendo consoles.

"With the quality of the device they've got it's possible they can expand their audience into an older, broader audience," he said.

"It was interesting to see games like Saint's Row on the device. If we could bring, let's say, a House of the Dead or an Aliens title, if the audience for 3DS is much broader it could give us much more scope in that market, and that's as exciting as well as Mario & Sonic and Monkey Ball games."

A number of publishers, most significantly Sega, Capcom and Electronic Arts, tried to reach a mature audience on the Nintendo Wii with mixed results, eventually abandoning efforts to reach hardcore game consumers on the home console.

But Hayes sees new potential, and praised Nintendo for its vision of 3DS, highlighting the fact that while many manufacturers can jump on the home 3D bandwagon, Nintendo has created its own unique, self-contained technology.

"The 3DS is Nintendo through and through, this is Nintendo's brilliance," he offered. "They're almost in their own technological world, doing their own thing.

"Whilst 3D TV is quite an amazing technology advancement, and many companies will get into that, Nintendo will now create this huge business with their own unique piece of technology that very few if any, will be able to copy. That's Nintendo over and over again, it's fantastic. For us as a third-party it's a great leg up in terms of the portable business."

The full interview with Mike Hayes, where he also discusses the potential for Sony Move and Microsoft Kinect, can be read here.

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Joe, 2 things contributed to why it didn't work well on Wii yet could on 3DS.

1. Timing. 3Ds is getting the mature products from day 1. That sets a tone for the whole generation. With Wii they didn't give mature products a try until after the tone of the console was well established.

2. Piss poor attempts. A grand majority of the mature product attempts on Wii were failures as projects before they were failures on the shelf. Putting Dead Space on rails? A black and white brawler? The first House of the Dead and RE: Umbrella Chronicles sold well over a million each. Their sequels launched in the midst of a huge influx of on rails shooters. Clogged the market that people were already sick of. Pardon my aggression 3rd party devs and publishers but whomever made those decisions warrants all the finger pointing.

So provided that their attempts on 3DS do not come with asinine decisions regarding them, they'll do fine.

I completely agree with Jimmy on this one. 3rd parties were just releasing clones, washed down ports or substandard ports onto Wii and then blame the console for not selling those games. While I appreciate Sega's effort on MadWorld, it was not a very good game. When you look at the sales figure of Monster Hunter Tri on Wii - it sold a whopping 1.4 million units world wide.

This shows that if there is a good game, "hardcore" gamers looking for mature games will go for them.

Ah so they mean they plan to eat into the graphics hungry hardcore PSP audience. With power like that, well of course. So there are like four levels for multiplatform releases to consider in the industry now.
Level 1= Web games
Level 2= games for DS and iphone
Level 3 (The awkward one)= games for PSP, Wii, iPad and now 3DS
Level 4= PS3, PC and 360 (PSP2 possibly).
(& stylized games can do well on a wide array of platforms without too much work on the developers part)

Amirite?
P.S. of course each platform has exclusive features to worry about like 3D and control schemes. But unless you want to make the best possible use of this stuff, ports can be pumped out easily to other platforms on the same level.